I eat the same foods every day.

Well, not exactly the same. I’d say about 80% the same every week. Scrambled eggs, chicken, vegetable juice, canned proteins, meatballs. Those are the staples of my semi-Paleo diet. (I say semi-Paleo because I just introduced Greek yogurt last week, and I’m a lot less strict than I used to be about eating the odd Oreo on a Thursday afternoon.)

I can think of a couple reasons why I eat the same few things every week: they are easy fits into the Paleo diet; they give me maximum flexibility to gain/lose weight very quickly; they taste good. Yet above all of these, the primary reason is an ignoble one: I’m mentally lazy.

I first noticed this when I was cleaning some old grocery receipts out of my desk drawer and realized that in half of my grocery trips I was experimental in my food purchases, while the other half I was completely and utterly boring.

What caused such irrational behaviour?

Time of day.

Yep, time of day. The receipts clearly showed that I have two very distinct shopping times: pre-9am, or post-6pm. And believe it or not, I’ve unconsciously split myself into two completely different shoppers.

Surprisingly, it comes down to one thing: will power.

We all start the day with a finite amount of will power. Long-term factors help to shape how much you have at the beginning of each day, but the important idea is that it is finite and drains bit by bit with every decision we make.

Pancakes or waffles in the morning? There goes some will power.
Bike or walk to work? There goes some more will power.
Is today the day to break it off with your significant other? There goes a lot of will power.

Knowing this, the concept of finite will power explains two more habits of successful people.

First, they follow morning rituals that eliminate petty decisions that drain will power. I heard on a podcast last week that Michael Phelps eats the exact same breakfast, listens to the exact same playlist, does the exact same warmups, etc. every day. His morning is so routinized that he’s made vitually zero decisions (and thus lost virtually zero will power) by the time he enters the pool.

With that in mind, when it comes down to the final few lengths between Phelps and another swimmer, who do you think has the extra push to touch the wall first?

18 gold medals.

The second thing, on top of routines, is that highly creative people tackle their creative work in the morning; in fact, it’s very common to hear that successful people make their creative work their first task of the day. Similar to how I was more creative and experimental with my grocery shopping in the mornings, the extra will power gives creatives of all capacities an additional extra boost to dive deeper into their ideas, test new methods, and push boundaries further. It’s like morning workers have an inherent performance-enhancer that silently eludes everyone else.

The world’s top creatives are applying processes to catalyze their creativity.
Will you?

Build your difficult or creative decisions into the beginning of your day. It will make those decisions easier, or at the very least, get you eating more than just scrambled eggs.